RCC Tips: Low Cost Housing Construction

Structural designs are essential to understand if you are building the home yourself, using local contractors. A survey of 2019 by GRIHA showed that 10 in 15 homes in semi-urban and rural areas are either over-designed or under-designed.

What does this mean for you?

An over-Designed home in simple terms means a house that has been built with excess use of reinforcement steel bars and Cement Concrete. The additional building material adds to the cost of construction. Some examples of over designed Homes.

Under-Designed homes are unsafe for living in an earthquake and have a significant reduction in dwellings' lifespan. The structures are built with insufficient building material often to cut corners in the process and bringing the cost of the building down at the expense of safety and quality.

Now that you understand the two most common mistakes during the construction of home. We will uncover why this is such a fact: how can you ensure a safe home and why structural designs bring down your buildings' cost?

Let's get started.

Most home projects in our country are built by unskilled contractors with poor knowledge of material science and structural know-how. They usually base their assumptions on their past projects. 

They are deficient in construction because assumptions are often inaccurate, and there is no guarantee on the structure. Most of them base their beliefs on past projects.

The past projects serve no relevance to your current home that has to be build simply because your site is unique; the overall size and design are different. 

A contractor, unlike an Architect, will build the entire home without communicating the design through virtual 3D images or walkthroughs, which further increases the chances of error.

The error is at the cost of your money.

When you build your home based on an approved Structural design of an architect, your home get's the benefit of scientifically based calculations of load, soil and overall lifespan of the building.

The drawing will allow you to accurately judge your building material's cost like sand, aggregate ( gravel/stone), no. of cement bags and Reinforcement bars.

Almost 55% of the entire home project budget is spent on the structure of the building. Now imagine if you chose the local, non-expert way of building. It could potentially cost you 70% of the overall budget.

A structural design contains the position, size and composition of structural elements like beams, columns, slabs etc.

The depth of excavation of the site is also directly affected by the footing and superstructure's size.  

It is a personalized map that helps you understand if the future vertical expansion of your home is a possibility or not. BIS can only provide Structural designs approved by engineers. 

In case you are somebody who doesn't leave safety to chance. It would help if you got your home design plans cross-referenced for Structural Drawings by an approved Designer or Firm. 

At Ongrid.Design all our designs are optimized by experts to provide you with accurate Structural Details, Certification and Consultancy. Let us know if you need help with your ongoing project.